


Lost Myth of True Love

by Iamthesmileyface



Series: (Corporate) Wasteland, Baby! [1]
Category: Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Amnesia, Cyberpunk, Detectives, Dystopia, F/M, Greene Corp is like an amazon/tesla merger, Multi, Not Good, Vivi has a motorcycle and I think that's really neat of her, Vivi is Shinto but it's just mentioned, Vivi's POV, inspired by that ridiculous bs elon musk is trying to pull with the neural link thing, the lewvithur and lewvi are technically past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26907049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iamthesmileyface/pseuds/Iamthesmileyface
Summary: Vivi Yukino, private investigator, discovers a strange change on her Greene Corp Personal Memories™ plan while between cases — a whole person being removed almost a full year ago. Who is this Lewis Pepper, and why can't she find out anything about him?A cyberpunk au!
Relationships: Arthur/Lewis/Vivi (Mystery Skulls Animated), Lewis/Vivi (Mystery Skulls Animated)
Series: (Corporate) Wasteland, Baby! [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1963264
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23





	Lost Myth of True Love

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hozier's song Talk off the album Wasteland, Baby!

“Hello  **Vivi. Yukino.** !” The overly-cheerful robotic voice in her head chirps. “We here at Greene Corp see that you are attempting to view your memories of a person no longer on your Secure Personal Memories™ plan. If you wish to view your memories of  **Lewis. Pepper.** , you will need to pay  **One. Thousand. Four. Hundred. Forty. Dollars.** We apologize for the inconvenience.”

Vivi groans, pressing the button embedded in the hollow of her throat. “Cancel purchase,” she snaps.

“Transaction cancelled. If you have any further requests or inquiries, please feel free to contact us at your local Greene Corp office at  **One. Eight Hundre** —” 

With a quick jab at the button behind her ear, the peppy robotic voice cuts off, leaving Vivi’s head ringing, a headache building behind her eyes. She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, focusing on the starburst patterns fading and blooming behind her eyes. The sounds of her apartment come creeping back — the steady drip of the ever-leaky faucet, the hum and whir of various electronics, a couple having a shouting match a few apartments down. By the time the door of the quarrelling lovers’ apartment slams shut, footsteps quickly receding down the hall into silence, Vivi’s burgeoning headache is almost completely gone. 

With a sigh, Vivi waves her sleek, light blue stylus in the air in front of her, bringing up her monthly bill. Her eye implant whirs softly, the itemized list shimmering into view. Rent, electricity, wi-fi, water, various subscription fees — she makes a mental note to cancel her subscription to, what was that, the  _ Wedding Vibe _ magazine? When had she ever read that, and, more importantly,  _ why? _ — and...there it is. Her Greene Corp Secure Personal Memories™ fee. She frowns at the number, floating static in front of her. With another wave of her stylus, she pulls up the last year of bills. Eleven months ago, her GCSPM fee dropped from $120 to $100 per month. She hadn’t given it much thought back then, too wrapped up in her case. A bittersweet smile flits across her face as she remembers the look on the young heir’s face as she told him she wouldn’t be telling his parents where he had run off to. Good deeds were a rare indulgence, but they didn’t exactly pay her bills. Hence why she was investigating her bills to begin with.

“Lewis Pepper…” she murmurs, tapping her chin with the top of the stylus. “Lewis Pepper…”

The name doesn’t ring any bells. He clearly is not related to her, and she doesn’t often put friends on her personal plan, so they had to have been together. That would also explain the subscription to a wedding magazine. Vivi curls her lip, the idea of getting married and  _ settling down _ a familiar disgust. Whoever he was, he had been on her personal plan for approximately six years, and then had been quite abruptly taken off, without being downgraded to her general plan or moved to her work plan. From that, she surmises that they either had an explosive breakup or he died. Given that it would have had to be an unbelievably, astronomically explosive breakup to make a professional investigator delete her memories, the breakup option seems unlikely. 

So, his death seems the likeliest option. Simple enough to find out, now that she has a name — deaths tend to be covered in headlines, death records, obituaries, that sort of thing, even if the person themself was utterly unremarkable. All of that is available, if you know where to look. Cracking her knuckles, Vivi Yukino, Private Eye, gets to work.

  
  


Two weeks later, Vivi throws her stylus across the room with a strangled, growly yell. It narrowly avoids smacking into her kamidana and clatters to the floor anticlimactically. Immediately, Vivi winces, crossing the living room in eight quick steps and picking it up. Turning the stylus over in her hands shows no new cracks, and she sighs with relief, waving it around to check its function. Her screens, back across the room, scroll up and down with the motion. She takes a deep breath, tucking it into her pocket and turning to face her kamidana, bowing, clapping, and muttering a quick thanks before repeating the gestures and turning back to the screens, mind a little clearer.

Dashing her futile hopes, the screens remain blank. None of her databases have turned up  _ any _ results for the name that has been haunting her. No obituaries, no cemetery spots, not even a birth certificate! She has even searched just for a Pepper family, but the only Peppers she could find were a family in New Jersey, the youngest of whom was 48, and is named Samantha. If she didn’t have Greene Corp in her ear telling her that she needs to pay over a thousand dollars to access her memories of Lewis Pepper, she would think he straight up did not exist.

It was time for desperate, illegal measures. 

Affecting a yawn, Vivi stretches, heading into her kitchen and pulling her tea supplies out of her cupboards: her favorite mug (it’s shaped like a turtle, the head, feet, and tail poking out from under the slightly domed cup), a little owl-shaped silicon tea infuser, and a container of lavender tea leaves. Controlling her breathing to keep her heart rate down, she reaches into the tea tin, palming the small, square device carefully hidden beneath a layer of tea before scooping the tea into the infuser. Humming a small song, she starts the water for her tea, tucking her arms into the sleeves of her overlarge sweater as she waits for the water to reach the right temperature. A sudden feeling of glue-like stickiness tells her that the device stuck right where it always did, into her upper arm, just above the crook of her elbow.

Agonizing minutes pass before her tea is ready. Vivi just barely keeps the thrill of adrenaline from affecting her too obviously, shifting from foot to foot as she stares at the electric kettle. The tea warms her hands as she walks to her bedroom, settling into her bed to drink her tea, her movements carefully languorous and calm. Setting her half-drunk tea on her bedside table, she yawns, stretches, and lays down, tucking her blankets around herself. She shuts her eyes and counts down from two hundred before shifting, wrapping her arms around her pillow and pressing the button on the device stuck to her arm. It vibrates gently, and she sits up.

Moving with a swiftness utterly incongruous to her previous actions, Vivi dashes out of her room, grabbing her shoes and spare motorcycle gear from the secret compartment in the back of her entryway closet. She has two hours before the device stops sending signals to her implants that she is asleep, and she has to make the most of it.

Her motorcycle, an old manual hybrid model, hums to life under her, and she speeds off, zipping through the traffic of self-driving cars with ease. The road beneath her wheels becomes bumpy and ragged the longer she rides, taking back alleys and half-abandoned residential roads to the edge of town. She slows as she reaches the edge of the city, the flat, dry expanse of the shrub desert stretching out before her. Steeling her nerves, she twists the throttle, heading out into the desert, the late afternoon sun glaring down behind her. 

Working in the business of information, Vivi has heard of a lot of things people only talk about with their vocal registers completely off, in bars so loud their neural links can’t pick up what they’re saying. A lot of them are secrets — politicians involved in human trafficking and other such immoral things, people vanishing in the wake of a famous actress, and so on — but others talk about organizations that exist outside of the carefully monitored and propagandized realm of law and business. Most of them are horseshit, but in her profession, it quite literally pays to be curious, and one in particular has proven itself to be very real and  _ very _ useful.

The timer on her watch reads 90 minutes when Vivi pulls up at the base of a mesa, kicking down her kickstand and sliding off. The mesa is utterly unremarkable, red-brown stone lying in layers of jagged, crumbly outcroppings, functionally identical to the many she passed on her way. Or so it would appear. Vivi strides up to the face of the mesa, pressing hard on a piece of rock sticking out a few inches. It slides down with a quiet click, and Vivi, enunciating clearly, says, “Your passwords are always terrible, let me in.”

A hidden speaker crackles with snorting laughter, and a semi-familiar voice says, “One of these days, detective, I’m actually going to make that the password.”

“But then how would you tell if I’m being tailed?” Vivi retorts, an unwilling smile tugging at her lips.

The Mechanic laughs again, and a section of the mesa opens up, quickly replaced by a hologram of the exact same rock face. Vivi hops back on her bike, driving it in. The doors close behind her, and there’s a moment of absolute darkness before the lights flicker on, illuminating a cavernous stone room, a large screen flickering on at one end. The Mechanic waves at her, his face hidden by a smooth metal welder’s mask.

Despite the mask, his voice is unmuffled as he welcomes her. “What do you need?”

Vivi takes off her motorcycle helmet, tucking it under her arm. “I need information,” she declares, skipping straight to the point.

The Mechanic tilts his head. “Information on what? I didn’t hear anything about you having a new case.”

“It’s not for a case, it’s...personal,” Vivi sighs, grimacing. The Mechanic simply waits for her elaboration, and she continues with, “I can’t find any records of someone who was taken off my personal memories plan. Birth, death, anything in between — not a  _ single _ thing.”

The Mechanic leans away from the camera, gloved hand coming up to drum a pattern on the exposed metal of his prosthetic arm. “That’s...that’s not good. But, uh...g-give me a name, detective, I’m not a, a miracle worker.”

Vivi weighs her options, studying the man on the screen. She’s thrown him with that, and it could just be that people disappearing so thoroughly is never a good thing, but something in her gut tells her there’s more to it. “Lewis Pepper,” she finally says, the name that’s haunted her for weeks now echoing in the sudden silence that falls between them.

The Mechanic freezes in place. “O-oh. Oh.”

Like a cat on a mouse, Vivi pounces. “Oh?”

The Mechanic seems to cringe. “I, uh...it’s not — it’s not...good ne-news…”

Vivi rolls her eyes. “I could’ve guessed that. People’s entire records don’t vanish into thin air for good reasons. What happened to him?”

The Mechanic looks at her, fingers tapping a nervous staccato against his arm. “You shouldn’t — far be it fr-from me to under-underestimate you, detective, but...you shouldn’t...look into this.”

Vivi’s frown only grows more pronounced. “Try me,” she says, dangerously even.

The Mechanic sighs, shaking his head. “He’s been taken prisoner by Greene Corp. You don’t...h-how much do you remember, V—detective?”

Vivi’s eyes widen, and she rocks back on her heels. “Taken prisoner by  _ Greene Corp?! _ What — what the hell are you talking about?”

That seems to answer the Mechanic’s question, and his shoulders slump visibly. His hand rises from his prosthetic, sneaking under his mask as he scrubs at his face. “God this is...we should’a known…” he mumbles, seemingly to himself. Taking a deep breath, he looks back at the screen. “There’s...detective, this is going to sound like a strange, completely out of left field question.”

“...go ahead.”

“How long has it been since your last case?”

“It’s been seven months,” Vivi replies promptly.

“Doesn’t that seem strange to you? A seven-month gap in your cases?” The Mechanic presses, words strangely insistent.

Vivi furrows her brow, looking away from the screen as she thinks. “It...it sort of does. I’m not...following.”

“And before that, what case were you working on?”

“The Alvey family hired me to find their son, who ran away.”

“ _ When _ did they hire you?”

“What are you talking about? They hired me a year ago.”

“J-just — please, detective. Give me the date.”

“May 13th, 2097,” Vivi answers, annoyed, then stops dead. “That’s not...that can’t be right,” she mutters.

“You’re right, though. The Alvey family hired you on May 13, 2097.  _ Two _ years ago,” the Mechanic says, an edge of desperation to his voice. “You’re missing a year.”

“But how can I be…” Vivi trails off, a headache shooting daggers through her eyes.

“That device. The one you’re using to make Greene Corp think you’re asleep. Where did you get it?”

Thrown by the non-sequitur, Vivi opens her mouth to respond, and blinks, closing her mouth. “I..I don’t know,” she murmurs. “I’ve had it for...a long time.” But that isn’t quite right, she  _ knows _ it isn’t. “No, I haven’t. I’ve had it for…”

The Mechanic exhales, shuddery. “You’re missing a year, detective. And th-that year was…was full of a lot of important things.” Slowly, haltingly, he reaches up, pulling his mask off. 

The pale, exhausted face that stares back at her from the screen is  _ familiar. _ She knows that face, knows what it looks like smiling and laughing hysterically and screwed up in a grimace, but she has  _ never seen that face before. _ The contradiction tears at her mind. She drops her helmet, doubling over and clutching at her head, teeth gritted against the waves of agony pulsing behind her eyes.

“ _ Shit, fuck, sonuva—” _ From the screen, there’s a scuffle, the whine of a microphone being bumped, and the Mechanic quickly says, muffled, “It’s — it’s alrigh-alright, I’m so-sorry, I — that wa-was — y-you can — oh,  _ fuck _ , I shouldn’t’a —”

Vivi takes a deep breath, straightening back up, squinting at the screen. The Mechanic has his mask back on, his shoulders hunched and head bowed. “Why do I know you?” She forces the words out through gritted teeth.

Miserably, the Mechanic’s breath catches. “I...it’s a long, long story, Vi— detective. It’s a long story, detective. I — we...knew each other. It’s — connected to the year you’re missing, but we met — before then. I’m sorry.”

Vivi rubs the back of her neck, trying to relieve the pain. “I need to know what happened.”

The Mechanic is silent for a minute. “I...shit. Sorry, Lew...I can’t exactly lie to her,” he mumbles, barely audible, before straightening up. “We’ll have better luck doing this in person,” he blurts. “Tw-two days, alright? Two days, meet — meet me here. Y-your device, it should have — another setting, press the, the button twice, and it’ll set up a hologram, ba-basic AI, really, of you doing — work.”

Vivi nods, barely comprehending what he’s saying through the miasma of pain and conflicting information. “It’ll be an awkward meeting if I can’t look at you without getting stabbed in the brain,” she says bluntly.

“I — m-might have...a bit of a remedy, I don’t know if it’ll work, I’m — it’s still r-really experimental…”

“Two days, then.” Vivi rolls her shoulders. “Good talk, Mechanic,” she tacks on drily.

“G-good talk, det-detective.” The Mechanic says, and she can  _ hear _ the reluctant, lopsided smile pulling at his lips.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Vivi has Greene Corp Brand Personal Enhancements: an eye implant, a neural link below her ear, and a vocal register in the hollow of her throat. They're not technically _required_ , but in the way that having internet nowadays isn't required. You absolutely need them to get a job, apartment, etc, but they're not going to actually come out and say that because then they might have to be provided by the government, and that doesn't make them any money. 
> 
> also, Vivi's mug is [this one](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/34/50/5a/34505a5fac5b5c9be8b518a6bd5994a9.png)


End file.
